what was the condition of the non-Russian nationalities before the 1917 russian revolution?
Answers
The ten years 1917-1927 saw a radical transformation of Imperial Russia into a communist state, the USSR. Soviet Russia covers 1917-1922 and Soviet Union covers 1922 to 1991. After a civil war the Bolsheviks (Communists) took dictatorial control. They were dedicated to a version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin. It promised the workers would rise, destroy capitalism and create a socialist utopia under the leadership of the Communist Party. The awkward problem was the small proletariat in an overwhelmingly peasant society with limited industry and a very small middle class. Following the February Revolution in 1917 that removed the tsar, a short-lived provisional government gave way to Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (RCP).
All politics and attitudes that were not strictly RCP were suppressed, under the premise that the RCP represented the proletariat and all activities contrary to the party's beliefs were "counterrevolutionary" or "anti-socialist." Most rich families fled to exile. During 1917 to 1923, the Bolsheviks/Communists under Lenin surrendered to Germany in 1918, then fought an intense Russian Civil War against multiple enemies especially the White Army. They won the Russian heartland but lost most non-Russian areas that had been part of Imperial Russia. One by one defeating each opponent, the RCP established itself through the Russian heartland and some non-Russian areas such as Ukraine and the Caucasus, It became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) following the creation of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the CPSU, became the leader of the USSR, achieving full dictatorship power from the early 1930s to his deat